Monti passed his early boyhood in this rural retirement. To the end of his life he remembered with fondness the days of his childhood, which were spent gaily amidst a large family of three brothers, older than himself, and five sisters. The reward for good behaviour among them was a permission to distribute charity among the indigent,--a sacred, soul-saving duty with catholics. The well-known benevolence of his parents drew numbers to their house, where portions of food were distributed to them. His mother never felt so happy as when thus engaged; and it is related of her that, when, a few years after, the family removed to Majano, where their charitable habits were at first unknown, she complained in a sort of alarm that they were no longer visited by the poor. The same biographer relates a story of Vincenzo. On one occasion he was permitted to distribute the portions of food to mendicants, who entered at one door and went out at the other: some among them fancied that they could deceive the child, and returned twice; and he, with ingenuous shame, turned away, and gave to them twice without looking, that he might not be obliged to accuse them of their trick. "An anecdote," continues his biographer, "perhaps scarcely worth relating, only that it describes the character, or rather, it may be said, the whole life of Monti, who, even in old age, frequently suffered himself voluntarily to be imposed upon." Were a philosophical analysis of Monti's disposition to be attempted, it might be discovered how this sensitiveness to the shame of others, this sparing of their feelings in preference to the assertion of truth and honesty, makes a part of the same weakness that led him always to regard as a secondary consideration moral truths and political integrity, when put in competition with the happiness and welfare of his domestic circle. We call this sort of sensibility weakness, because, though usually united to great private rectitude of character, it is incompatible with the heroism of the patriot and the martyr.
For several years Monti had no instructors except his kind parents; but, soon after their removal to Majano, he was sent to the seminary of Faenza, which enjoyed a good reputation for the solidity of its instruction; there he learnt early and well the Latin language. His first attempts in Latin verse were, however, so singularly infelicitous, that his master thought it necessary to put him into a lower class than that in which he had first been placed. The boy, roused to indignation, made no complaints, but secretly learned by heart the whole of the Æneid; and persevered so earnestly in conquering the difficulties, that his Latin verses soon became distinguished for a style and harmony that announced his poetic talent. His second trial was so different from the first, that his masters began to regard him as a sort of prodigy; and he himself entered with delight and ardour on the study of the Roman poets. The full force of his impetuous and fertile imagination was early awakened by them, and he began to exercise the art peculiar to his country of extemporising verses; but his master had the judgment to withdraw him from an exercise so pernicious to the strength and critical delicacy of poetry, and induced him to write with care and meditation. He was yet a boy when, under this tutelage, he composed a volume of elegies, several of which have been printed.